What do moss, a bacon McDouble and romance have in common? They were all topics for Under the Bed’s (UTB) first performance of the year.
Last Saturday night, Andover’s comedic improvisational group turned the audience’s suggestions into hilarious scenes, filling the theater classroom with students eager to witness UTB’s comedic creativity.
The first skit showcased the group’s inventive skills by introducing the actors through an on-stage gathering, reminiscent of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
The group consists of Andrew Schlager ’12, Head of Under the Bed, Ceylon Auguste-Nelson ’12, Margaret Curtis ’12, Pearson Goodman ’13, Miranda Haymon ’12, Hemang Kaul ’13 and Uday Singh ’12.
UTB opened with the game “No You Didn’t.” In this game, Schlager, Goodman and Curtis acted out a scene while Haymon interrupted the dialogue with shouts of “No you didn’t,” which forced the three actors to alter their previous line until Haymon approved of the alternative dialogue.
Before long, the audience was crippled by laughter as the scene became increasingly outrageous.
Next came a favorite UTB skit, “Da Do Run Run,” which called for the entire cast to create a song about a girl or boy, in which each line had to end with a word that rhymed with that girl or boy’s name.
Schlager started off with the audience’s suggestion, “I met her on a Monday and her name was Kai.” The ridiculousness quickly escalated with lines such as “3.14 are the first three digits of pi,” sung by Singh and “a person who can’t pronounce their d’s would pronounce the word bride like bri.”
Next, audience member Adella Pierre ’14 was brought on to the stage for the third game, “Day in the Life.”
After questioning Pierre about her daily routine, UTB reenacted their interpretation of her day with Kaul playing Pierre.
The day quickly veered from the “norm” as Pierre’s mom confused her with the singer Adele and Pierre’s friend from Virginia, played by Schlager, announced, “Ella Fitzgerald is going to be singing The Color Purple in a Batman suit.”
“I didn’t think my hum-drum life could become so entertaining,” said Pierre.
UTB continued with the game “Line in my Pocket.” In this game, Kaul, Auguste-Nelson and Haymon incorporated lines that were written by the audience before the show and pulled out of their pockets during the scene.
This game proved to be the most difficult for the UTB members as they had a hard time keeping the scene going, since it was about three men looking for a bacon Mcdouble in a scrap yard. However, their crazy characters and hilarious attempts to fittingly incorporate lines such as “take the paternity test” kept the audience laughing.
The show ended with “Gardy’s Game,” which was founded by an UTB alumnus. The game involved Goodman leaving the room, while the audience came up with an outrageous story for why Goodman would be late to work that morning.
Once Goodman returned, Singh, who played his boss, questioned him about his tardiness. The rest of the UTB cast acted out the wild incidents that the audience suggested behind Singh’s back, while Goodman tried to guess what his story was.
This was a crowd favorite. UTB members tried to mime events such as falling in love with a homeless man, getting mauled by a bear at a modeling agency and riding a kangaroo to work.
After the show, audience members were still laughing. “It was just funny,” said Rachel Andresen ’13 who was at a loss for words to describe the cast members’ great sense of humor.
The UTB cast thought the night was a success as well. “I thought the show was a good display of all of our talents,” said Kaul. “It wasn’t a single good person[‘s effort] it was a group effort. It’s a team sport.”
It seems clear that UTB will continue to attract a large audience this year. Julia Kichorowsky ’13 agreed. “I just can’t stay away,” she said.
